Postgraduate English www.dur.ac.uk/postgraduate.english Issue 24 May 2012 Editors: Kaja Marczewska & Avishek Parui A New Species of Biography: The Darwin Poetry of Ruth Padel and Emily Ballou Vicky MacKenzie* * University of St. Andrews:
[email protected] MacKenzie Postgraduate English: Issue 24 A New Species of Biography: The Darwin Poetry of Ruth Padel and Emily Ballou Vicky MacKenzie University of St. Andrew’s Postgraduate English, Issue 24, May 2012 Introduction 2009 was the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth and 150 years since the first publication On the Origin of Species, Darwin’s most famous work, which describes his theory of evolution by natural selection.1 There were hundreds of events around the world to mark the anniversary, including exhibitions, academic symposia, specially-composed musicals, new anthologies of scientific papers and packs of ‘Darwin’ playing cards.2 The influence of Darwin has been felt across disciplines and literature is no exception: his bicentenary year also saw the publication of two poetry collections responding to his life, Emily Ballou’s The Darwin Poems and Darwin: A Life in Poems by Ruth Padel.3 Darwin has already been long-associated with literature through ‘literary Darwinism’ and ‘evocriticism’: these theories are forms of literary criticism that seek to understand literature through evolutionary psychology. However, my concern is not with how reading and writing poetry can be understood through Darwin’s work on evolution, nor in examining the enormous impact of Darwin’s theories on culture – extensive work has already been done in this area, notably by 1 Its full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.